Dalton’s father took the bowl without looking up. He hated to be interrupted during the news. Dalton went back to the kitchen and leaned against the fridge, slipping into Reasonably Prodigal Son mode. He made himself take a deep breath and modulated his voice. You had to come at Sherry Rev sideways, if you were dumb enough to come at her at all.
“Mom, here’s a question for you.”
“Umm-hmm?”
“Did you, by any chance, happen to send an application to this little-known college called Harvard a few months ago?”
His mother looked up, distracted. Then she smiled.
“Yes. I didn’t think you’d mind, since you’ve been so busy transferring schools. Do you?”
“Oh, not at all.”
“Good.”
“I just, uh, thought maybe I might be needed around here instead.”
“Instead of what?”
“You know, instead of off on a campus somewhere. Learning to protest Columbus Day. And studying about the evolution of kegs and stuff.”
Sherry Rev said nothing, leaning over her recipe.
“Mom?”
“Umm?”
“Did you also, by any chance, send some stories of mine in with the application? Stories, I might add, no one has ever read, which were sitting harmlessly and privately on the thumb drive I keep in my lockbox? Stories there’s no way you could possibly have known about, in a place that’s professionally hidden?”
“Well, honey,” Sherry Rev said, folding two quarts of heavy cream into a pan of sautéed beef and putting it on simmer. “I had to add something in lieu of an essay. As Principal Inference said over the phone, your extracurriculars are, frankly, not all that impressive.”
Dalton coughed. “You talked to Inference?”
Sherry narrowed her eyes in an unabashedly data-gathering glance. “Yes. She called this afternoon to say how well you’re adjusting. Is it true?”
“Stiff Sheets is adjusting!” Turd Unit yelled.
“Kirkland, pipe down.”
“Principal Inference is nice,” Dalton said, not wanting to distract his mom from her recipe. A distracted Sherry was a cross-examining Sherry. “School’s nice. Everything’s fine.”
“In my experience, which is considerable, when someone says everything’s fine, it means the exact opposite.”
“Stiff Sheets is being an opposite!” Turd Unit howled, spitting melted cheese inside Dalton’s helmet.
THE PRIVATE DICK HANDBOOK, RULE #18
When Mom starts asking unanswerable questions, toss an aerosol can into the flames.
Dalton reached over and yanked his helmet from Turd Unit’s head.
“Hey!”
“Hey, what?”
“Hey, hairy palm, knock it off!”
Dalton got Turd Unit in a sleeper-hold, rubbing his knuckles over his little brother’s scalp. Turd Unit fought and clawed until he got tired, and then possumed, pretending to cry.
“No crying,” Sherry Rev said. “Work it out.”
Turd Unit kept crying. Dalton grabbed some macaroni off the plate and slipped one into each of Turd Unit’s nostrils. Turd Unit sneezed, sending them across the room like Roman candles, where they stuck to the far wall. Sherry Rev didn’t seem to notice. Dalton and Turd Unit burst out laughing. They slapped five. Then reloaded the macaroni cannon. Like everything else in the world, it never worked as well the second time. Still, they slapped five. And then slapped ten. And then fifteen, doing it harder each time.
“Butt plug.”
Ouch!
“Renob.”
Ouch!
“Shaft grip.”
Ouch!
“Rimwipe.”
Ouch!
“BOYS!” Sherry Rev yelled, then pointed to the big clock on the wall. It was almost nine. The diversionary tactic had worked flawlessly. Dalton slipped out of the kitchen while Turd Unit went into the living room to watch his favorite show, Bull Snap, where contestants had to knock cigars out of each other’s mouths with a thirteen-foot braided leather whip for cash and prizes. Sherry Rev absentmindedly wiped a long stain across the front of her dress and then went back to her recipe.
Dalton went to his room. Above his computer was a shelf containing, in chronological order, all but one of the fifty-two Lexington Cole Mysteries. On the far left was the very first, a copy he’d paid nearly a hundred dollars for—Hammershot Panicsmith. On the far right was the final installment, published posthumously, Even a Blind Pig Finds a Truffle Now and Again. There was an empty slot next to An Open Mind, a Closed Fist, and a Bloody Mouth where the edition he’d lost chasing after Elisha Cook should have gone. Even so, Dalton felt inspired by the multicolored spines, the collected wisdom, guile, experience, and steel balls of one man. It was too bad he was going to have to sell the collection. He’d already had it appraised at a bookstore in town. The clerk had given him a low whistle and a nod of appreciation when he’d seen the stack of first editions. He’d get less now, of course, because of the missing book. Still, he’d be that much closer to the body armor.
Dalton snapped on the desk lamp and began making changes to “ The A to Z of Possible Gods.” He spent an hour doing revisions, then checked his website. A bunch of hits, but only a few messages. Two people with lost animals, a cat named Jacques and a dog named Mr. Tibbs. One message from the arms dealer in Ukraine. Dalton took a deep breath before clicking it open. He’d been waiting for a reply to his last e-mail asking for a little more time. The response was curt and final. Saturday, midnight, or the deal was off. Then they called him a dildo in Cyrillic, which he had to run through a translator to confirm.
Shite.
There were four e-mails from Macy, Call me! and What happened? and Did I do something wrong? and Why haven’t you called me yet? But when Dalton called, the phone rang and rang, no answer. He sent her a reply, Pick up your phone, but she didn’t e-mail back. Then he took out his case notebook and wrote out some thoughts on Salt River. Wesley Payne was a Populah with cash. But Macy said Populahs had no racket. Which probably means they were into something a Euclidian wasn’t likely to come across while studying for quizzes about the Sino-Japanese War. It also means, no matter how great a guy he was, Payne had had some power. And someone wanted his power. Or wanted him not to be able to wield it anymore. At the same time, there was a missing hundred grand. Money was power. Inference had power, but a whole lot less with no money, so maybe it was a cash grab and a move to weaken her at the same time. And then there was the clique war. All wars were fought over goods or egos. Someone was trying to corner the market at Salt River, grab the rackets and everything else for themselves. Chuff was wrong about a balance. There was no balance, and there never would be. There was one big hand whose fingers were slowly closing over the whole school. But whose? The notes in my helmet insist it was Lee Harvies. Except Lee Harvies are a ghost. Tarot made the most sense but was also the most obvious. It could be the Snouts, desperate to move into new rackets with the economy gone to shite. Corruption from within. Corruption with a badge. Sounds good, but not likely. Or maybe Wesley’s old Crop Crème buddies were lying low and getting ready to re-form? Could they be strong enough to actually make a move?
Dalton sighed. He knew he was going in circles. He needed more information. And there was only one place to get it. At the source. You had to apply the principle of Occam’s Sledgehammer: Pressure the most obvious suspect and find out who Wes Payne’s girlfriend was.
Dalton closed his case file, prepared to do a solid hour of homework, when he realized he’d left his bag with all his assignments at Macy’s house.
Tragic. Seriously.
He dialed her again. No answer. He fished Wes Payne’s envelope out of his jeans pocket, recounted the money, and put it carefully with the rest of his stash in the lockbox. On top he laid a note that said Mom—knock it off! Just before closing the door, he noticed faint writing on the envelope, lines running all the way across the back. He held it under the light. The first half was a
n even more lightly penciled version of Wesley’s suicide note, the lyrics to “Exquisite Lies.” Beneath that was what looked like a poem, or another Pinker Casket song. It was called “The Ballad of Mary Surratt.” Could Mary Surratt be Wesley’s girlfriend? And why was he so obsessed with cheesy lyrics? Some of the words had been heavily erased, exactly like the suicide note, either crossed out or written back in, like he had worked hard at getting it right. Dalton put the envelope in his pocket and got in bed. After a little while his mom poked her head in.
“ ’Night, honey.”
“ ’Night.”
“Dalton?”
“Yeah?”
“There are broken dishes on your floor.”
Dalton had taken to laying broken crockery in a circle around his bed in case anyone decided to get cute and sneak in while he slept. Every night his mom mentioned it, sort of as a running joke, but also, he figured, in the vague hope he would one time take it upon himself to explain why. Instead, he told her what he always did.
“Sorry. I’ll clean them up.”
She nodded and closed the door. It was quiet for a few minutes, before his father’s snoring started its nightly gore through the thin walls. Dalton snapped on the bedside lamp and thought about what Elisha Cook had said about his short stories. Were they really good enough to get into Harvard? What he’d wanted, more than anything, was to be able to write like Barnaby Smollet, the author of the Lexington Cole series. It was why he’d tried writing to begin with. Again and again he’d held one of Smollet’s books open and attempted to match his style: the short sentences, the terse phrases, the tough-guy posturing. It never worked. The stuff he wrote was laughably overdone and thinly considered. He went through a dozen first chapters, through multiple dissipated debutantes. Through detectives so crooked they had to screw their underwear on. Through inbred heiresses and heavily scarved fortune readers and pharmacists of ill repute.
He reached over and pulled a sheaf of paper from his notebook, holding the stories his mom had submitted in front of him. He licked his thumb and looked at the first paragraph, trying to imagine what Elisha Cook had seen in his words, trying to read it from his point of view.
HARVARD ADMISSIONS PROGRAM
Danielle Steel Creative Writing Scholarship Application Story #1, “The Leaves Always Scream the Loudest”
By Dalton Rev
It was twelve o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and the darkness was absolute. Ash felt his way across the bedroom floor until he found the bottle of brandy that Counselor Dan kept under the bed. He popped it open and took a long swig, coughing half back up. His throat burned and he felt queasy, so he forced down another gulp. Counselor Dan wouldn’t mind. Mostly because Counselor Dan and Counselor Sue and all the rest of the adults had disappeared a week ago.
Along with the electricity.
And the sun.
There was a scream and then a crash. One floor below, the remaining campers scratched and tore and rooted around. “Mom!” they yelled, over and over. “Mom mom mom mom mom!” Pubescent baritones mixed with late bloomers’ pinched sopranos, voices rising in agonized fifths. Most of them had stripped naked. And used the mud in the yard for body paint. And torn the furniture apart to make clubs and spears. And tied the fat kid caught hoarding Ring Dings to the desk in the lobby, the same fat kid who kept moaning and crying and begging to be released, or at least given some water.
Ash finished the brandy as banging resumed against Counselor Dan’s door. At first it was just a few fists, and then a frenzied dozen. Voices cursed and railed, fingers grappling for purchase, chanting in unison.
“Ash Ash Ash Ash Ash! Kill Kill Kill Kill Kill!”
They slammed themselves against the oak door that Ash had long since secured with nails and seven of the nine arms of the teak statue of Shiva that had once dominated the lobby. But even that wouldn’t hold much longer.
“Ash!” Bam. “Ash!” Bam. “Ash!”
It had been a week since the darkness fell.
“Kill!” Bam. “Kill!” Bam. “Kill!”
Or never lifted.
It had been seven full days since the entire camp had woken to an absolutely black morning, since the students and staff and faculty had been forced to admit that the sun had simply failed to rise.
And maybe never would again…
Dalton threw the rest of the pages on the floor. It was crap and he knew it. He couldn’t write for shite. Like, seriously, not at all.
Somewhere, Barnaby Smollet was boiling over in his grave.
CHAPTER 12
TWO EGGS, CRISPY BACON, AND A UNIT OF TURD SLURPING CEREAL
The cracking of dishes woke him. Dalton was on his belly, face mashed into a pillow, arms splayed. In one quick motion he reached between the mattress and the wall for his broken golf club, ready to swing. Sherry Rev didn’t even flinch at the brandished nine iron, apologizing for waking him so early.
“What’re you doing, Mom?”
“I know you need your sleep, Arnold Palmer, but there’s someone on our lawn. Behind the tree. Looking up at your window.”
Dalton sighed, thinking what a total cardigan this Elisha Cook was, but also secretly relieved. Harvard? Had he really turned down Harvard? Dalton pulled on some pants and parted the curtain, looking out at the tree in the backyard. There were no pinstripes, no three-piece suit. There was only a belly. A big one hidden by the world’s ugliest Hawaiian shirt.
“Why is there a rather chubby young man who has overdosed on hair gel picking his nose on the lawn outside our house?”
“He wants a bromance.”
“Terrific! You made a new friend at school already?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“Do you want to invite him in for breakfast?”
THE PRIVATE DICK HANDBOOK, RULE #19
Why do people hide behind trees? No one in the history of the world has ever successfully hidden behind a tree.
“He can stand there and make his own breakfast.”
“Dalton.”
“Yeah, okay, Ma. Let’s fire up the waffle iron. But make me a promise?”
“Sure, Tiger. What is it?”
“No more mentioning, let alone showing anyone, my writing?”
“Deal.”
“I’m serious, Ma. Do not tell Mole, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Mole?”
“Mole. You promise?”
Sherry Rev looked her son in the eye. “I promise.”
Mole sat crunching through his fourth waffle covered with Flavor Flavah, while Turd Unit sat next to him, spraying the can directly into his mouth. Dalton’s dad just drank coffee.
“So… Mole,” Sherry said. “Do your parents live around here? Would I know them by any chance?”
“You can call me Lester, ma’am.”
“You can call me Turd Unit,” Turd Unit said, imitating Mole’s voice and stuffed-cheek delivery almost perfectly. Even Dalton’s father laughed.
“Clever, little man,” Mole said. “Do I think you have a future on the comedic stage? In front of a mic and a boozy nightclub crowd? Yes, I do.”
“Is Lester,” Turd Unit asked, still in Mole’s voice, “by any chance short for M-O-L-E-S-T-E-R?”
“Kirkland! Knock it off!” Sherry said. Turd Unit cackled maniacally, now spooning in huge mouthfuls of his favorite cereal, Frooty Bobbers. Light blue milk spilled down his chin.
“Your parents, Lester?”
“My dad’s gone. It’s like, what dad? He took off a while back. Mom works up at Milton Friedman. The community college? Teaches economics. Invest here, don’t invest there, add this column of numbers to that one. Night school housewives deserve to bring home the investment bacon too, am I right?”
“What’s her name?”
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
“My mother?”
“Yes. Your mother.”
Mole waited a long time before answering.
“Buffy.”
“Buffy?” Dalton’s mom said.
“Buffy?” Dalton’s dad said.
“Buffy?” Turd Unit said, turning his spoon around and staking a vampire waffle in the heart.
“Buffy Bucharest,” Mole said, without his usual enthusiasm. “Ha-ha. Hilarious. Say it a few times. Get it out of your system. Can we move on?”
Sherry Rev began washing dishes, her prosecutorial zeal sated. Dalton’s dad went into the living room with a refill and turned on the news.
“You know a Mary Surratt?” Dalton whispered. “She in any of the cliques?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You got any idea who Wesley Payne’s girlfriend was?”
Mole looked surprised. “I guess most girls in school wanted to be. Saw him with lots of them, but not like holding hands. That slick had his pick, pluck any tomato off the vine. Rumors, rumors, you know, but to be honest, I’m not el convincedo Wesley really had one.”
“Macy says he talked about her all the time. And why are you speaking Spanglish?”
Mole shrugged. “Wesley didn’t talk about this mystery spinderella anywhere that it trickled down. I’m thinking if he habla’d about it, sooner or later the el poop would’ve trickled down to me.”
“Poop!” Turd Unit said, fishing the prize out of his box of Frooty Bobbers. It was a tiny plastic hot dog whistle on a lanyard. He put it around his neck and began to blow.
“Anyhow,” Mole said, finishing off another waffle, “we’re gonna be late for escuela.”
“Where’s your car?” Dalton asked, looking out the window.
“Moms dropped me off in the Kia.”
Turd Unit tweeted in shrill bursts. “No car means boyfriends ride tandem on scooters! One boyfriend saying That feels so good in Spanish the whole way!”
“Kirkland!” Sherry Rev said, without much enthusiasm. When she turned back toward the sink, Mole yanked the plastic whistle from Turd Unit’s neck and ground it under his heel.
“Mom, Bucharest crushed my wiener!”
You Killed Wesley Payne Page 8